The question now was, what should Congress do with all this carefully
prepared data? Supported by recommendations from the House Committee
on Military Affairs, Congress decided to take two concurrent courses
of action in the years from 1926 to 1933. First, it passed a series
of six bills to authorize one national park, four national military
parks, and one battlefields memorial, as follows: [101]

Date
Approved

6/2/26

Moores Creek National Military Park

7/3/26

Petersburg National Military Park

3/14/27

Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania County Battlefields Memorial
(including also Chancellorsville and the Wilderness)

12/1/27

Stones River National Military Park

3/26/28

Fort Donelson National Park

3/3/31

King's Mountain National Military Park

It may be noted that through an entirely separate sequence of events
Yorktown Battlefield also became a national historical reservation
as a part of Colonial National Monument on July 3, 1930, as, indeed,
Big Hole Battlefield in Montana and Sitka in Alaska had already become
national monuments under the Antiquities Act as long ago as 1910.

Secondly, in 1930, Congress undertook to deal with the fifty Class
IIb battlefields that had been recommended by the War Department for
commemoration by drafting a huge omnibus bill listing and describing
each project individually and authorizing appropriations for land
acquisition and monumentation ranging from $2,500 to $100,000 depending
on the importance of the site. Added all together the program called
for a total appropriation of $624,400. It was a "rivers and harbors"
bill for the monumentation of American battlefields, and very likely
only the beginning, In preparation for consideration of this measure
by the Congress, the House Committee on Military Affairs held a lengthy
hearing on March 21, 1930. In addition to the members of the committee,
21 members of the House who were interested in particular battlefield
bills were also present and most of them testified. The committee
also heard testimony at length from Colonel Landers of the Historical
Section of the Army War College, who was in general charge of the
comprehensive survey of American battlefields. Colonel Landers made
a responsive and thoroughly informed witness. It was necessary for
him to testify, however, that the total program under the 1926 act
would probably require the ultimate expenditure of $10,000,000 for
national military parks and another $10,000 000 for battle sites other
than parks, or a total of $20,000,000. [102]

On April 8, 1930, with the added benefit of data from the hearing,.
Representative Lister Hill of Alabama, who had presided, introduced
the omnibus bill, H.R. 11489. And on May 19 he presented a comprehensive
report to the House from the committee on the subject of battlefield
commemoration. He favorably recommended passage of the entire omnibus
bill, with only one minor amendment. [103]

What then happened is not clear. It must be remembered that eight
months previously, the stock market crash of October 1929 signalled
the onset of the Great Depression. It is likely that by May 1930 historic
preservation and commemoration had fallen to a much lower national
priority in the minds of members of Congress than it had seemed to
occupy four years earlier. In the end, Congress again resorted to
"special acts for special battlefields," even when authorizing only
modest monuments.

Such treatment was individually authorized for each of the following
battlefield sites between 1929 and 1931:[104]

Date
approved

2/21/29

Brices Cross Roads

2/21/29

Tupelo

3/1/29

Monocacy

3/4/29

Cowpens

6/2/30

Chalmette (take over maintenance)

6/18/30

Appomattox (monument only)

3/4/31

Fort Necessity

If one adds these seven battlefield sites to the six national military
parks or their equivalents and the one national monument embracing
a battlefield authorized during the same period, it makes a total
of fourteen additions to Federal battlefield holdings between 1926
and 1933.

This was the general situation when, on June 10, 1933, President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt signed the executive order that brought about the
transfer of the national military parks, battlefield sites and national
monuments, until then administered by the War Department, to the Department
of the Interior. Along with the historic sites and buildings themselves,
the records and files of the 1926-1933 national survey of battlefields
were also transferred to the Interior Department. From that date forward,
the policies and programs related to surveying, preserving, marking
and interpreting battlefields were merged into the broader general
program of historic preservation and interpretation then being developed
under the leadership of the National Park Service.